The US government filed more than twice as many demands for data about Google users than any other other country in the past six months, according to figures the search behemoth supplied Monday.
What's more, according to the Google Transparency Report, Google fully or partially complied with the US demands in 94 percent of the …

COMMENTS

Doh!

Baal is asking Mephisto for users souls. He complies with the request. Other famous demons watch closely without saying anything. Then the Archangel Gabriel complains that we should be careful because we don't know what the evil ones are doing.

"US is controlled by the voters"

Be more careful

More to the point that people need to realise that if you do things online, there is a pretty good chance that someone will have a record of it. Additionally rather than lose their business or let things get messy in court, they will hand over any info about you. Quite frankly to most businesses they couldn't a monkey's wotnot if they hand over your details, it simply doesn't bother them.

Democratic countries are controlled by their voters...

But not necessarily by a majority of the electorate. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance - someone once said... I/we expect our politicians, legislators, police and judiciary to be a bit sharper but, sadly, too many are not and their self interest prevails.

When 'the electorate' stand up and try to be heard (Greece, Middle East, China, Britain ....) they'd better have the 'powers that be' on their side or it will all end in tears.

American Judiciary seems to have more about it when it comes to trying to defend the people against the state but I don't live there so can't comment.

Foreigners

The US Federal Government

Does not consider Americans to be citizens The US Dept of Education bought shotguns a last year... What, pray tell, do they need weapons for? Drones for local cops and toys to record the contents of your phone on a traffic stop. I got pulled over for window tint - which was fine the previous three years I've owned the truck - gave me a warning even though there are cars in the police station parking lot with darker tint than mine... Basically a fishing expedition on their part. More and more intrusion into the lives of so-called citizens. Lastly, I offer the molestations of TSA as another fine example of governmental overreach and the projection of power over the citizenry.

6%

Surely the real news story here is that fact that at least 6% of the requests are so overly broad and blatantly invalid that Google felt legally safe enough to not comply with them at all.

In the case of Australia 1 in 5 requests were in this category!

It's not clear from the story what proportion of requests are only partially valid but it raises serious about who authorizes the requests to be made and how well trained they are in what is actually legal.

I'm no great fan of Google but in this case they should be praised for at least standing up to some of the requests.